Oakland v. Arizona

Last week, Oakland passed a resolution boycotting Arizona and Arizona based businesses (May 5, 2010) due to the passage of the anti-immigration (read: Anti-Mexican) law, making me proud, proud, proud to live in Oakland.

Those who say that the law will not encourage racial profiling forget two things -- there is no one talking about securing any borders besides the one we share with Mexico, and that unless you indiscriminately ask everyone for "their papers," you most definitely will be racially profiling people, because how will you decide that you need to check their citizenship status? I'm sure that the police won't be thinking, "Oh, that DUI looks like an illegal Englishman, I'd better check him out." And second, that there is not just black and white to this issue, but a whole lot of "shades of brown." These are people: people who may have had children in this country, children who are not citizens of Mexico, people whose lives and families risk getting torn apart.

I listened to a feature on the radio show "Latino USA" a couple of weekends ago where they interviewed a girl who was brought here by her parents when she was 3 months old. She doesn't know anything but the US. She was raised here -- for all intents and purposes, she is an American. But she can be deported to a country that she truly doesn't know, where she has no community, no friends, possibly no family, because she doesn't have papers that say what is evident -- that she belongs here.

And why do I keep hearing the fear that people coming to this country from Mexico want to sell drugs, kill people and commit all sorts of crimes? I would think that the majority of people who come here just want a chance to work and send money home to their families -- why would you jeopardize that by committing crimes? Seems to me like you would want to stay under the radar. I'm sure that there are people who have come here from many different countries who have committed crimes -- that's not the bulk of the people who come here from any country, and it's not the bulk of Mexicans either.